The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

April 12 (25)-April 27 (May 10), 1905

Draft Resolution on the Participation of the Social-Democrats in
a Provisional Revolutionary Government

1.Whereas a really free and open mass struggle of the
proletariat against the bourgeoisie requires the widest possible political
liberty and, consequently, the fullest possible realisation of republican forms
of government;

2.Whereas various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sections of the population,
   the peasantry, etc., are, now coming out in increasing numbers with
   revolutionary-democratic slogans, which are the natural and inevitable
   expression of the basic needs of the masses, the satisfaction of which—
   impossible under the autocracy—has been made imperative by the
   objective development of the entire socio-economic life of Russia;

3.Whereas international revolutionary Social-Democracy has always recognised
   that the proletariat must render most energetic support to the revolutionary
   bourgeoisie in its struggle against all reactionary classes and
   institutions, provided that the party of the proletariat maintain absolute
   independence and a strictly critical attitude towards its temporary allies;

4.Whereas the overthrow of the autocratic government in Russia is inconceivable
   without its replacement by a provisional revolutionary government, and
   whereas only such a change can ensure real freedom and a true expression of
   the will of the whole people during the inauguration of the new political
   system in Russia and guarantee the realisation of our programme of immediate
   and direct political and economic changes;

5.Whereas without the replacement of the autocratic government by a provisional
   revolutionary government sup ported by all revolutionary-democratic classes
   and class elements in Russia, it will be impossible to achieve a republican
   form of government and win over to the revolution the backward and
   undeveloped sections of the proletariat and particularly of the
   peasantry—those sections whose interests are completely opposed to the
   absolutist, serf-holding order and which cling to the autocracy or stand
   apart from the struggle against it largely on account of the oppressive
   stupefying atmosphere; and

6.Whereas with the existence in Russia of a Social-Democratic party of the
   working class, which, though only in the initial stage of its development, is
   nevertheless already organised and capable, particularly under conditions of
   political freedom, of controlling and directing the actions of its delegates
   in a provisional revolutionary government, the danger that these delegates
   may deviate from the correct class line is not
   insurmountable;—

Therefore,the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. holds
that representatives of the Party may participate in the provisional
revolutionary government for the purpose of relentlessly combating, together
with the revolutionary bourgeois democrats, all attempts at counter-revolution,
and of defending the independent class interests of the proletariat, provided
that the Party maintain strict control over its representatives and firmly
safeguard the independence of the Social-Democratic Labour Party, which aims at
the complete socialist revolution and is in this respect hostile to all
bourgeois-democratic parties and classes.